This research demonstrates financial derivative trade of unprocessed materials, for the mining industry through legal smart contracts. Within the mining supply chain, a stock of mined resources can reside in a mineral stockpile for over twenty years without gaining financial interest and without undergoing the mineral extraction process to derive value from the asset. This research elaborates on a blockchain solution implemented to increase miners’ short-term cash flow for business operations through the issuance of derivative assets on mineral stockpiles which can be traded through legally binding smart contracts. The system is the first to enable mining companies’ access to the underlying asset’s value earlier in the production lifecycle through smart contract technology whilst providing hedge funds with access to new financial products for investment portfolios.

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A numerical model is proposed in this research to analyse the behaviour of the pulse jet driven by percussion hammer. The mass of the hammer is usually larger than that of the piston and the resistance of compressed water can low down the piston, thus multiple collisions occur each time when the hammer strikes the piston. The proposed model has the merit to consider various striking possibilities to simulate the process of pulse water jet generated by multiple hammer collisions. In addition, a hammer-driven percussion pulse jet is developed and the corresponding experiments are carried out for verifying the reliability of the numerical model. Comparison results show that the predicted pressure and velocity values match well with the experimental data. The simulation of the generation of pulsed jet reveals the collisions and motions of the hammer and the piston and provides understanding of the mechanism of the pulse jet generation. The design of the hammer-driven pulse water jet device can be optimised through modelling different combinations of the parameters of the chamber, hammer, piston and nozzle for a specific purpose of rock fragmentation.